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Video – To Australia in 90 minutes at hypersonic speed

The revolutionary SpaceLiner concept offers a unique vision for a high-speed passenger transportation system of the future by seamlessly spanning the boundaries between aviation and spaceflight. Currently under design at the German Aerospace Center, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), the ultra-fast hypersonic spaceplane is designed to transport 50 passengers from Australia to Europe in an unprecedented 90 minutes.

The concept is based on a two-stage, fully reusable system – a passenger orbiter and a booster stage with an environmentally friendly rocket propulsion system fuelled by liquid hydrogen and oxygen. The engines will accelerate the SpaceLiner to more than 20 times the speed of sound in less than 10 minutes. Then, upon booster separation and from an altitude of about 80 kilometers, the passenger stage will glide down in a state of unpowered flight to land at its designated destination.

In this video, project manager Martin Sippel and his Australian Monash University PhD candidate, Olga Trivailo from the DLR Institute of Space Systems in Bremen, introduce the SpaceLiner and answer the most important questions about this visionary and cutting edge project.

After the initial burn, the reusable booster stage will separate from the orbiter, in which there will be a capsule with a capacity of 50 passengers.
Image: DLR (CC-BY 3.0) 2013

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Fabian Walker has been an online editor in the DLR communications department since 2012. Until 2007, he studied audiovisual media at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne with a focus on documentary film directing. He then worked as a freelance writer for the online editorial team of the WDR.
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